Parts of the text were separately privately printed from 1911 to 1920,[1] and the whole book appeared in its French original in France in May 1924 and in the United States in 1950.

The dialogues use evidence from naturalists, historians, poets, and philosophers in order to back up Gide's argument that homosexuality is not unnatural and that it pervaded the most culturally and artistically advanced civilizations such as Periclean Greece, Renaissance Italy and Elizabethan England.

Gide states that these authors depicted male–male relationships, such as that of Achilles and Patroclus, as homosexual rather than as platonic as other critics insisted.

Gide uses this evidence to insist that homosexuality is more fundamental and natural than exclusive heterosexuality, which he believes is merely a union constructed by society.

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